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Banquet Speech

A scientist should be the happiest of men. Not that science isn't
serious; but as everyone knows, being serious is one way of being
happy, just as being gay is one way of being unhappy.

A scientist lives with all reality. There
is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and
eventually to love it.

I tell my students to try early in life to
find an unattainable objective. The trouble with most of the
things that people want is that they get them. No scientist needs
to worry on that score. For him there is always the further
horizon. Science goes from question to question; big questions,
and little, tentative answers. The questions as they age grow
ever broader, the answers are seen to be more limited.

A scientist is in a sense a learned small
boy. There is something of the scientist in every small boy.
Others must outgrow it. Scientists can stay that way all their
lives.

I have lived much of my life among
molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to
know molecules, so well that when they have some question
involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if
I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule;
and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel
like a big molecule!

So we have much to be thankful for. With
this great honor you cast a radiance upon our science. We who
work in vision are happy to have it made so visible.

I am glad to be able to bring this offering
to the memory of my teacher, Selig Hecht, whose widow Gelia is
here with us tonight; to my wife, who is also my closest
co-worker; and to my co-workers at home, particularly Paul Brown,
who for twenty years has done so much himself, and with us
all.

But there is something more. The grocer,
the butcher, the taxi man, all seem delighted to share in our
pleasure. The Nobel Prize is an honor unique in the world in
having found its way into the hearts and minds of simple people
everywhere. It casts a light of peace and reason upon us all; and
for that I am especially grateful.